Human Resources: Executive Summary: Coaching

Coaching and its close relation, mentoring, have been around in some form ever since humans began aspiring to better lives. In fact, educators acknowledge human exchange as an essential agent for performance enhancement and the transfer of vital knowledge from childhood on. Once largely regarded as a method for improving athletic performance, coaching has recently surged in the corporate business world as a key strategy for developing global management and leadership skills.

Though they are mutually reinforcing, there is a distinction between the processes and goals of coaching and mentoring. Coaching typically targets the improvement of specific work behaviors geared to enhance business objectives. By comparison, mentoring involves a "helicopter" approach that helps employees develop overarching behaviors for professional and personal growth. Trained external coaches, specialist internal coaches, line managers, peers, and HR departments may all be tapped for coaching or mentoring assignments.

Coaching as a business strategy is still in its infancy, so most companies have not yet developed metrics for program evaluation. And regulatory standards needed to guide the training and selection of coaches, as well as the processes of coaching, are for the most part still on the drawing board.

Nonetheless, many companies do rely on anecdotal evidence and testimonials showing coaching and mentoring to be a valuable performance-enhancing tool. The result has been a dramatic rise in its use in the U.S. and abroad. More U.S. firms are offering coaching to improve performance by executives, managers and high-potential employees, even without benefit of regulatory standards. The Harvard Business Review reports U.S. companies are investing upward of $1 billion yearly on coaching interventions, and more than 50% of 328 companies polled in a Manpower Consultants survey said they offer coaching to key employees. A survey of 168 companies, conducted by Boston-based Clear Rock, an executive coaching and outplacement firm, found coaching to be the second-most-used strategy for retaining middle managers.

In the UK, internal coaching is emerging as a critical HR strategy, according to results from the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development's (CIPD) Training and Development 2005 survey. Some 90% of the survey's approximately 550 respondents said their line managers used internal coaching activities (64% used external coaches), and nearly three-fourths (74%) said they plan to expand internal coaching. Yet, according to CIPD's Training and Development 2004 survey, only 6% of those polled had a strategy in place for developing a coordinated companywide coaching initiative.

For employers, improving leadership may be the primary focus of coaching programs. But executives also expect that coaching will gin up productivity and aid retention through employee development and increased job satisfaction. A Gallup survey found that companies with coaching strategies have attained higher profits (27%) and a 50% greater possibility of lower turnover, with a 56% improvement in customer loyalty. A report from International Personnel Management states that workforce training with coaching increases productivity by 88%.

Employees at all levels are taking to the coaching experience. Formerly resisted and stigmatized, coaching is now gaining respect and acceptance among high-level executives. And companies are finding they can use coaching programs as a cost-saving attraction for inexperienced talent as well: Newcomers find that coaching can speed up their learning curve while serving as a career-enhancer, while employers can substitute coaching for more costly benefits.

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The Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp, inc.) improves corporate productivity through a combination of research, community, tools and technology focused on the management of human capital. With more than 100 leading organizations as members, including many of the best-known companies in the world, i4cp draws upon one of the industry’s largest and most-experienced research teams and Executives-in-Residence to produce more than 10,000 pages annually of rapid, reliable and respected research and analysis surrounding all facets of the management of people in organizations. Additionally, i4cp identifies and analyzes the upcoming major issues and future trends that are expected to influence workforce productivity and provides member clients with tools and technology to execute leading-edge strategies and "next" practices on these issues and trends. i4cp is a for-profit company with offices in St. Petersburg, Florida.